The Washington Post: on Foreign Policy

Jill Stein: Re-examine NATO to avoid economic and military domination

STEIN: I think we need to take a good hard look at NATO. In my view NATO needs to be part of a re-examination of a foreign policy that has been based on economic and military domination and we need to look at what the consequences of this kind of foreign policy are. And, you know we spent $6 trillion--

Q: What's the domination, where NATO comes into it?

STEIN: Well, NATO for example is how we can do an end run around our own internal process when we want to create regime change somewhere.

Q: So your running mate [Ajamu Baraka] referred to the "gangster states" of NATO. Do you share that view?

STEIN: Well, he uses language I would not use. But, shall we say, I don't think it represents American democracy to do an end run around our process or determining when we will go to war.

Q: Well he uses language, but what does he mean?

STEIN: I think he means the same thing I'm saying.

Scott Walker: Foreign policy is about leadership, not PhD's

Walker responded by ticking through his recent itinerary of face time with foreign policy luminaries: a breakfast with Henry Kissinger, a huddle with George Shultz and tutorials at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute. But then Walker suggested that didn't much matter: "I think foreign policy is something that's not just about having a PhD or talking to PhD's," he said. "It's about leadership."

Walker contended that "the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime" was then-President Ronald Reagan's move to bust a 1981 strike of air traffic controllers, firing some 11,000 of them. "It sent a message not only across America, it sent a message around the world," Walker said. America's allies and foes alike became convinced that Reagan was serious enough to take action and that "we weren't to be messed with," he said.